


In the shadow of your heart

by lapoesieestdanslarue



Category: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio
Genre: I'm Sorry, M/M, alternative title: The Argument TM, it's just angst and then fluff i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 21:11:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15494787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoesieestdanslarue/pseuds/lapoesieestdanslarue
Summary: “You have to forgive yourself.” It’s said quietly amongst their calm, Oliver bracing himself for the storm that’s about to come.And come it does. He watches the way James is immediately pulled taught, made harsh by the words. “It’s not that easy,” he replies, words clipped with frustration.





	In the shadow of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> I took the stars from our eyes, and then I made a map  
> And knew that somehow I could find my way back  
> Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too  
> So I stayed in the darkness with you

It’s a heavy silence that lies between them, the gulf of years of silence and lies, and underneath it all, the hurt of both love’s unrequited. 

James is still in the doorway, hands flexing and unflexing, limp by his side, in quick succession. 

“Oliver.” It’s exhaled, a soft breath of disbelief, coupled with the impending terror that comes with finally facing the music. He feels impossibly exposed under Oliver’s watchful eyes, as if he were naked on a stage. 

“James.” Horse. Desperate. Coming from a man who’s spent years waiting for the one in front of him, only to have lost him— and then lose him, and then get him back, all again. Tired, exhausted. “Can I come in?”

James doesn’t answer, for a second, still stuck on the fact that it’s really Oliver, here and in the flesh in front of him. Out of prison, a free man at last. And still, he came to James. 

“James?”

“I— sorry. Yes, of course.” It’s a small apartment, and James quickly laments it’s state. No bigger than a box, the kitchen, dining and living room are all crammed in to one small space, with a mattress over in a small Northern enclave, facing large windows. There are two small rooms , closed off by white, peeling doors on rusting hinges, which Oliver imagines house the bathroom and closet space.

“It’s a nice place, you have.” He doesn’t know what he expected of James, in truth. Some Talented Mr. Ripley-esque hideaway in the Italian countryside? A Gatsby-like mansion in an affluent suburb, complete with a green light burning at the dock? Oliver can’t say. Either way, the cramped apartment above a café in a narrow Parisian street didn’t match up with the expectation he’d had in his mind's eye. 

James gives a rueful laugh. “It’s... it is what it is.”

“How do you pay rent?”

“I work for the lady downstairs, which pays half. At night I pull shifts as a waiter in a restaurant by Notre Dame.”

“Every actor’s dream,” Oliver jokes, droll and dry. He doesn’t miss the way that James tenses, flinches at the mention of his past life. 

They’re stalling for time, they both know it. But it’s okay, Oliver thinks, because what’s going to come out, and what needs to be said are both equally unpretty things and it’s. Nice, he supposes, to just sit with James, be with James, take him in again, relearn him. Sitting on opposite ends of the couch, studying his profile that’s so hauntingly familiar, intrenching himself in James’ eyes, catching the gold highlights of his blonde hair when the sun catches it just right. It both breaks and mends Oliver’s heart— so close to Dellecher days, so far from where they ever thought they’d be. 

“You have to forgive yourself.” It’s said quietly amongst their calm, Oliver bracing himself for the storm that’s about to come. 

And come it does. He watches the way James is immediately pulled taught, made harsh by the words. “It’s not that easy,” he replies, words clipped with frustration. 

“The hell it is. Forgive yourself and forgive yourself and let yourself be forgiven as many times as it takes for you to find peace.” His jaw clenches, his nostrils flare. Oliver inches closer, like Icarus inching towards the sun. He doesn’t mind much; he’s always smiled when he fell from James’ grip. “James it doesn’t _matter_ any more.” 

James flings himself around to face Oliver, eyes wide with angry disbelief. “Doesn’t matter? You think what happened didn’t matter? Jesus Christ, Oliver, someone _died_. And I was the one that killed them. You went to prison. And you’re telling me that doesn’t matter?” 

Oliver shakes his head. “You live and live and relive that moment as if it has to define you and it doesn’t. You can move on from it, James.” 

“ _I am in blood / stepp’d so far,”_ James says, desperately grappling at empty air, trying to conjure the right words for the mass of feeling that consumed him every waking minute, the void that lived in his chest and ate at him with grief and guilt. “I can’t just put it behind me, Oliver. I killed Richard, I ruined your life--”

“You didn’t ruin my life,” Oliver rebutts, the same dialogue from the same argument they’ve had time and time and _time_ again.

“ Is that seriously what you think? Where do the others think you are right now?” James asks. “You gave up _everything_ for me, Oliver. And I let you.”

“Don’t pull that bullshit on me,” Oliver snaps, dressing James down in a way only one who knew him so intimately could. “What the fuck did you expect me to say? _‘Hey guys I think our dead friend left me a message in his suicide note so I’m going to fly across the Atlantic to see if I can find him’_? You’re not going to make me feel bad for my decisions anymore. I wanted to find you, and I did. I wanted to take the fall, and I did.”

 

“I made a tragedy of you,” James weeps.

“Fuck you,” Oliver croaks softly. “Who are you to say what tragedy is?”

Oliver runs a hand through his frazzled hair, feeling his fuse shorten, James’ eyes on him unseaming him. “You know I… I waited for you. Goddamnit, James, I waited for you every single day for a decade. I waited for letters, or emails, or even a fucking carrier pigeon. And then to come out, and have to be told by Pip that you had _killed_ yourself-- It nearly killed me. So help me God, it nearly put me in a coffin beside you, the heartbreak of it all. Everything I’d imagined when I came out of prison, I imagined in relation to you. And then you were just _gone._ But the fucking Pericles?” He stops, rubbing a frustrated hand over his face. He paces the room for a second, trying to muster up the courage to say the words that have been lodged in his throat for nearly ten years. “You never even said goodbye. Why did you do it?” His voice is hoarse. “Why couldn’t you have just waited for me like I waited for you?” 

“Atonement,” James answers quietly, the shame of it heating his cheeks. “It was for atonement, Oliver.”

“Atonement for _who?”_

“For Richard, for you. For what I did, and what I failed to do. For all of it.”

Oliver feels tears pricking at his eyes, fraught with emotion and the head-wrecking chagrin that comes with coming up against a wall you can’t climb, can’t tear down, can’t go over. “And you _have._ You gave up your life, your friends, everything you could have and should have had-- You gave it all up. It’s done now, James, it’s atoned for. So let it be done.”

“It’s not that simple--”

“The hell it is.”

“When you left for prison--”

“No!” Oliver roars, red in the face, at his wit’s end, hands clutching his hair in desperation. “You were the one that left not me! _You_ left _me_!” His words are punctuated with painful sobs, his chest heaving with the force of it. Ten years of repressed emotion, things left unsaid and questions unanswered. They bubble now to the surface, like fireworks on the fourth of July, all that life that lay dormant in Oliver rising to the surface. “You left me for four years!” 

James own eyes are watery with tears. He gets up from his seat on the sofa, reaches forward to touch, but stops short of it when he sees how taught Oliver’s muscles are, pulled with tension. “I told you not to take the fall—“

“But of _course,_ I did,” Oliver laments, begging him to understand, furiously wiping away the tears though it does him little good. “Because I loved you so much I would have burned down the whole world for you and you were too much of a coward to notice.”

The despair that had rooted itself in James slowly unearths itself to let anger blossom in its place.“I was the coward? You’re the one that played cat and mouse with Meredith all year.”

“That was different. And you were a selfish asshole when you pulled that shit with Wren so don’t put this all on me.”

“You left me just as much as I left you.” Still wounded and hurt from it all these years later, the pain of just saying it almost shocks James, like a splinter you’ve had for so long that you forget it’s there altogether, until something catches it just the wrong way. 

James has never seen Oliver as sad, as angry, as furiously upset as he looks now. His ribs exhale forced breaths, his face coloured with his discontent, his mouth screwed into an unhappy and bitter grimace. “I stayed, for you. I stayed by your side every year we were together, I stayed for you in prison, and I never left you, not once. I left everything and flew across the fucking world for you. And I couldn’t ever be angry or sad or upset about it. I forgave you for killing yourself and then I forgave you for _lying_ and you still—- you’re still angry at me for what I did for you!”

“It wasn’t yours to do.”

“But I wanted to!” They’re shouting now, and it’s a wonder that Gina hasn’t come up yet and scolded them both for the noise pollution. James and Oliver, both screaming at each other in a fit of a desperate attempt to rebalance, to understand. 

It’s like pulling at a thread when you’re lost at sea, trying desperately to stand steady and not be overwhelmed and give up, all unravelling around you; but James is strong as iron, and perpetually just out of reach.

“I never asked you to!” Tears gleam like moonlight on James’ cheeks, infuriated and sorrowful, his hair sticking up all over the place from where ghosted fistfulls had pulled at it.

“But it was always for you!” Oliver comes down from his high, voice breaking, clogged and cloyed with his anguish. “Do you know how hard it was to love you and be loved by you and never be able to act on it? Don’t you see what that did to me?” He looks at James, face ruddy from exertion, eyes a blotchy red from his break down. “What have we done to each other?”

It’s the saddest love story Oliver knows. To have loved someone, so desperately, so selflessly, that would give yourself up. To be loved so fiercely, so protectively, that you break their own heart when you try to save theirs. 

James reaches a hand out, grappling at empty air, as if words will conjure themselves and he could catch them. “I will never understand why you felt the need to bleed for everyone else,” he says, helplessly. 

He wants an answer; Oliver doesn’t have one. He wishes to God he did. 

This where they are now, both of them standing at opposite ends of a nearly empty room, hearts hammering in their chests from their reckless yelling, tears drying on their cheeks and in their eyes. Honest, open and ugly in a way they haven’t been before.

When Oliver remembers all those years, days and nights of such a profound longing that belonged solely to James, something akin to courage bubbles up from an unknown spring in him, and he does what has always scared him most.

He takes a step forward, reaches through the dead air between them, and takes James outstretched hand, bridging the gap they’d made for themselves. The force of the touch shocks him, and within the second of action, he has James’ delicate hand wrapped in his two big, calloused ones. He cradles it against his chest, right over his heart. 

“Haven’t you already given him enough, James?” It’s spoken softly, a bare rupture in the quiet they’ve created. “He’s done it. He’s won. You’ve atoned for it. This, running away, _killing yourself_ — can’t you see that that’s atonement enough? He wins. You’ve given that bastard your whole life. He’s won now, it’s over. So let it be over.” In a moment of pure bravery, he takes James’ palm and does what he had done so many years before; kisses his palm. “It’s forgiven.” Five more, chaste pecks to each of his fingers. “It’s forgiven.”

Beside him, James lets out a wretched breath, quivering on his lips, as he feels Oliver’s heartbeat beneath the skin, hot and warm and incredibly strong. An anchor. He takes a step forward, coming in to his side. He rests his forehead by Oliver’s ear, breathing in his smell, his feel, his warmth. 

A shuddered breath escapes Oliver’s lips, and James’ heart swells with love, in its purest form. 

“Oliver _,”_ he whispers. “ _So dear I love him that with him, all deaths I could endure / Without him, live no life._ ”

_“I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss.”_ He looks down. James has long eyelashes, fanning across his face. Their breaths are mingling, hot on each other’s skin. 

James strokes his cheek once with his thumb, and then leans in, slowly. Their lips brush once. Oliver gasps. And then James presses his lips hard against Oliver’s. He tilts his head, and James goes the other way, and then there’s grasping of shirts and James’ hand has moved to the back of his neck, pulling him closer. 

Someone gasps, someone licks into the other’s mouth, and it feels like raw electricity. Feels like pure power, a rebellious act in itself. It’s joyous. It’s tentative and messy, but it’s them. It’s Oliver and James, kissing in an apartment in Paris with the sun setting outside. 

Eventually, they come up for air. They stare at each other. Their lips are still so close together Oliver can feel the slope of James’ bow arch lips. It smells like flowers and memories and the present and the future and he already longs to do it again.

It’s jarring to think that when this had all started it was a quiet curiosity that had spurred him on, to find out more about the slight, raven-haired enigma. Then, a tentative fondness for James, a soft kind of protectiveness that was found in library and Castle attics, side by side. Love came for him last- it had been slow but swift. Inevitable, Oliver supposes. Not surprising, really. Not surprising in the slightest. 

It’s so much to handle, such a heavy loving to bear. All those days Oliver hid from James, his feelings a secret too precious to see the light of the day. And now, here, in an apartment overlooking the streets below them, drowned in the orange sunlight, wrapped in a tender embrace with the only person who’s ever truly had all of him, unconditionally.

Oliver curls his hand into a fist, holding tight onto the worn fabric of James’ t-shirt. It still smells like him, still feels like him. He grasps on hard, terrified that James might slip through his fingers once more. From the ironclad grip James has on the back of his neck, Oliver thinks finally they might be on the same page. 

Something rises in his chest then, gentle but overwhelming, swallowing Oliver up in the force of its love, gratitude and staggering relief that comes with being with James again. James, alive. 

He’s almost embarrassed by how quick he is to weep, breaking under James’ soft hands, but his resettlement officer had warned him that this might happen; that he could find himself easily overtaken by the beauty of the world, by the relief of being free,by human contact. And he is, he thinks, thankful beyond measure for all those things. But he knows, as well, that it was never going to mean much without James there beside him, without answers to the countless questions that tormented him and the precarious relationship they treaded for so long. There is a relief to it, that he will admit. Not so much a relief of being free, though, but rather of having survived it. He and James, both of them, they made it. In spite of how hard it was. Or maybe, _because_ of how hard it was. Shakespeare in his plays, little acts of life, shows this to be true; only when a problem or a sorrow is overcome can love, happiness and life play on. James and Oliver, and the rest of their Dellecher troop, have dealt with so much profound sorrow during their young lives, more than one might be able for. But here in this small slice of heaven in a Parisian apartment, Oliver can’t help but hope against hope that all their pain and suffering is over now. And now can come the happiness, the joy, the _life._

James, infinitely kind as he is, is there to cradle his head in the crook of his neck, carries Oliver through all of it. 

“I don’t know how we’re going to make a home out of this,” Oliver admits quietly, in the hallow between his ear and jaw. 

James presses a tentative kiss to Oliver’s palm, like he had done so many years before when he said goodbye for what had been the last time. “I think…” he bites his lip, frowning. “We’re going to continue to scream at each other, because in my heart of hearts I’m scared that I don’t deserve you, and because I’m not used to showing people my hurt. And you’re going to get frustrated with me because you’re still anchored on Earth and you’ve always been the realist.” A shared smirk between the two boys, men now, but still the same kind of playful, still knowing intricately one another. James strokes the sharp angle of Oliver’s jaw with the pad of his thumb, continuing. “But we’ll always have each other, and that’s all that really mattered anyways. And we’ll share this apartment, and share our smokes, and share everything even if it takes a while to get there. We’ll get a cat, like you always wanted, and name it something ridiculous like ‘Coriolanous’ or ‘Horatio’. We’ll go to bed every night together and wake up every morning together and we’ll never let each other go, and it will be so perfect, it will be so--” Oliver cuts him off with a kiss, desperate to show him how much it means, knowing words would fail him, every time.

“I loved you blind, and now I wouldn’t know how to walk away even if it was killing me. I loved you first before I loved anyone else.” James’ eyes are hungry when he says this.

“You are the only person I know how to love,” Oliver replies, words weighted with the honest truth of it. They were each other’s before they were anybody else’s, since before they were even here at all. _“'l’ll follow thee and make a heaven out of hell / To die upon the hand, I love so well."_

James smiles, the familiar way he used to when they were in their first years, challenging and wicked and smart. _“That but this blow / Might be the be-all and the end-all here, / But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, / We'll jump the life to come.”_

It’s a promise, and a prayer. They’ll make it, Oliver knows. They’ve weathered heavier storms than those to come. 

**Author's Note:**

> So. I know I had just posted a fic about the happy ending we deserve!! Yay!!   
> Except.   
> I can't, for the life of me, justifably say that they're ending would come as easy as that. There's so _much_ between them it can't just be wiped away at first glance, right? There's so much to unpack-- Oliver's sacrifice, James' guilt, the love that went unspoken for so long, the betrayal and the hurt. 
> 
> Oh gosh, i don't know. What do you think? And where's an IWWV support group when you need one??


End file.
